glug

Mathematics: What do grad students in math do all day?

A lot of math grad school is reading books and papers and trying to understand what's going on. The difficulty is that reading math is not like reading a mystery thriller, and it's not even like reading a history book or a New York Times article.

The main issue is that, by the time you get to the frontiers of math, the words to describe the concepts don't really exist yet. Communicating these ideas is a bit like trying to explain a vacuum cleaner to someone who has never seen one, except you're only allowed to use words that are four letters long or shorter.

What can you say?

I want to write software that helps kill people.

Please, before you call the police and get my github account put on lockdown, allow me a moment to explain. What I really want to do is work on projects that advance the human condition and improve people's lives. I've been in a mad dash to learn how to program for the past four or five years exactly because I realized how much good I could do for the world with a computer.

	#Same idea as yesterday, but in one function with two arguments
	pi.est<- function(iter,n) {
	pi.ratio<- function(n) {
	x<- runif(n, min=-1,max=1)
	y<- runif(n, min=-1,max=1)
	return(4*sum(x^2 + y^2 <= 1.0)/n)
	}
	sum.pi<-stor.rat<-numeric(0)
	for (i in 1:iter) {
	stor.rat[i]<- pi.ratio(n)

	#!/usr/bin/env sh

	##
	# This is script with usefull tips taken from:
	# https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.osx
	#
	# install it:
	# curl -sL https://raw.github.com/gist/2108403/hack.sh \| sh
	#

	Latency Comparison Numbers (~2012)
	----------------------------------
	L1 cache reference 0.5 ns
	Branch mispredict 5 ns
	L2 cache reference 7 ns 14x L1 cache
	Mutex lock/unlock 25 ns
	Main memory reference 100 ns 20x L2 cache, 200x L1 cache
	Compress 1K bytes with Zippy 3,000 ns 3 us
	Send 1K bytes over 1 Gbps network 10,000 ns 10 us
	Read 4K randomly from SSD* 150,000 ns 150 us ~1GB/sec SSD

	// needs -fnested-functions. Can be done without, but makes the whole thing a lot more cumbersome
	// and less useful.
	#include <stdio.h>

	#define my_data_alts ( void (A)(int) , void (B)(int, int) , void (*C)(char, int) )
	#define make_my_data(n) void n my_data_alts
	typedef void (*my_data) my_data_alts;


	void show(my_data match) {

	// This file shows a hack to achieve operator overloading in
	// JavaScript. I have defined 3 different operators:
	//
	// >= = monadic bind
	// >> = kleisli composition
	// > = functor map
	// * = applicative apply
	// + = semigroup append
	//
	// Head straight to the bottom to see example usages.

	#!/bin/sh

	# Get MacOSX idletime. Shamelessly stolen from http://bit.ly/yVhc5H
	/usr/sbin/ioreg -c IOHIDSystem \| /usr/bin/awk '/HIDIdleTime/ {print int($NF/1000000000); exit}'

	Hello scala, my old friend
	I've come to take you home again
	Because a feature slowly creeping
	left me plagued with doubts and weeping
	and the version that was tagged in the repo
	just has to go
	it lacks the signs of soundness

	On sleepless nights I hacked alone
	applying ant and other tools of stone

	// Just before switching jobs:
	// Add one of these.
	// Preferably into the same commit where you do a large merge.
	//
	// This started as a tweet with a joke of "C++ pro-tip: #define private public",
	// and then it quickly escalated into more and more evil suggestions.
	// I've tried to capture interesting suggestions here.
	//
	// Contributors: @r2d2rigo, @joeldevahl, @msinilo, @_Humus_,
	// @YuriyODonnell, @rygorous, @cmuratori, @mike_acton, @grumpygiant,